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The Regular-Workflow Edition Thursday, June 7, 2018

Apple's Plans To Bring Artificial Intelligence To Your Phone, by Tom Simonite, Wired

Apple is far from the first tech company to release software to help developers build machine learning models. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all done so, with Google’s TensorFlow most popular. Federighi claims none easily fit into an app developer’s regular workflow, limiting machine learning’s potential. “We're really unleashing this capability for this vast developer community,” he says. Create ML is built on top of Apple’s Swift programming language, introduced in 2014 and popular in some developer circles for its ease of use.

Apple’s New ResearchKit API Monitors Parkinson’s Disease Symptoms On Apple Watch, by Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac

To achieve this the API will monitor two very common symptoms of Parkinson’s including Tremors, indicated by shaking and quivering detected by the Apple Watch, and Dyskinesia, a side-effect of treatments for Parkinson’s that causes fidgeting and swaying motions in patients.

Inside Apple's Integration With Medisafe, The First Test Of The Apple Health Records API, by Jonah Comstock, MobiHealthNews

The Medisafe integration shows how Apple Health Records is providing more than just EHR integration, which Medisafe has already been doing on a hospital-by-hospital basis.

“A real difference is [this integration] does not require us to sign documents with the hospital,” Shor said. “The approval process is simple. Because Apple is the middleware between the two of us, that does not require us to do all of those processes that we have to do with a hospital. And you know the signatures and processes, that is something that slows innovation dramatically.”

Develop

Ersatz Free Trials, by Daniel Jalkut, Bitsplitting

I hope this article has been helpful in illustrating why Apple’s review policy announcements, while very welcome indeed, do not constitute a major shift in their support for free trials in the App Store, and do not substantially change the status quo. Many of us are stretching the limits of the App Store to provide something that comes close to real free trials, but we would all be far better off if Apple announced a substantial change in supporting them. That didn’t happen this week.

This Third-year WWDC Scholarship Winner Built An ML Model To Recognize Beer Yesterday, by Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider

Yesterday (!) while at AltConf (a meeting held around the corner from WWDC) he whipped up a machine learning model to recognize drinks, and tell if a photo or camera image was water, wine, beer or some other drink.

He took 400 photos of peoples' drinks and created a model in ten minutes that he demonstrated for me by looking at image search photos.

Notes

WWDC Run With NRC Lead By Nike’s Coach Bennet, Runners Awarded Powerbeats3, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Guided Runs in Nike Run Club feature motivational voiceovers from Coach Bennet and other Nike Run coaches, celebrities, and athletes. These coached runs work on iPhone and can be downloaded directly on Apple Watch — even over LTE.

What Happened When A Chemical Engineering Professor Ditched The Chalkboard For An iPad, by Greg St. Martin, News @ Northeastern

“When I’d write notes on a blackboard, students would have to wait for me to finish so they could copy the equations,” said Lustig, who teaches math-heavy courses that require a lot of writing. “I was writing equations that were a foot tall, they were copying everything at a quarter inch tall in their notebooks, and I had my back turned to them. It was not an efficient use of class time.”

Now Lustig primarily uses an iPad Pro and the Notability app. “I can see the expressions on my students’ faces,” he said, “so the student feedback is pretty much instantaneous.”

Bottom of the Page

Will AI and machine learning progress to a point, one day, when we don't need that many programmers? Just tell Siri the app you want, and she will create one out of thin air.

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Thanks for reading.